This post is syndicated with permission from GamerFront.net

A lot of people decide to make modifications to their PC case, and they turn out alright. Other people decide to go all-out, and you’re left with a creation that can only be described as “pure awesome”. This Battlestar Galactica PC mod falls into the latter category.

This machine has just about everything you could imagine, right down to functioning runway lights. You’ll find 3 2.5-inch LCD screens, and a nice 10-inch LCD screen on the side, just in case you’ve forgotten a full-sized one. Even more impressive is the slot-loading optical drive hidden behind the Battlestar Galactica medallion. I can’t even imagine the sort of time and effort it took to put this together. Kudos to Boddaker, the mastermind behind this incredible project.

Link to the original article…

Electric Chair, Executions series (Figure 0049)

Catherine Chalmers‘ executions series depicts roaches being electrocuted, hung from miniature nooses, and burned at the stake. None of the roaches in the photographs however was actually burned or executed or hung-in fact, the roaches were already dead by the time they were photographed. In the case of the gas chamber photos, the cockroaches were immobilized with carbon dioxide and woke up a few minutes later. (via)

• Tate | Online Events | Disrupting Narratives
  video of the talks (via neural)
• Plant genes switched on by sound waves - tech - 30 August 2007 - New Scientist Tech
  CAN plants hear? They all respond to light, which affects how they optimise growth and survival. Plants also have a sense of touch, allowing them to stiffen in response to wind, and a "taste" for nutrients. But whether they respond to sound is a mystery.

Otto van Busch pointed me to this new course of Fashion & Technology at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University. The course explores the field through a study of clothing and style as socio-cultural communication and an investigation of how emerging technologies can assist in personal expression. After that, practical workshops invite students to craft their own prototype.

Calle Rosenqvist, Beat Dress (photo by Johan Sundell)

Otto only sent me a few pictures to illustrate the work of the students. Nothing else. But the teaser was good enough, i asked course coordinator Kristina Törnblom to put me in touch with the students so that i could understand better what their projects were about.

First victim of my questions, Emma Thordin Ungesson told me the story of The Drum Suit:

(Photos by Mika Korhonen)

The suit enables the drum player, someone who usually doesn’t get as much attention as the singer and other band members, to play and move freely around the stage during concerts.

“Piezo sensors sewn in the cuffs and under the foot interact with an arduino board that is connected with an midi wire and then in to the computer,” explains Emma. “In the computer, midi files on a midi keyboard generate a bass sound and cymbals sounds. I also peeled off the plastic covers of the piezo sensors to make them more sensitive.”

Because Emma has been quite busy recently the project is on hold but the original plan was to have the midi player sewn in it as well so that it wouldn’t have to be connected to the computer. Another idea is to create similar suits for the whole band.

Lenna Truncale about The Zodiac Dress

“All 12 zodiac signs are formed by LEDS and sequins on the border of the dress. All signs light up at once, but only one of them lights brighter than the others depending on what month it is,” says Lenna. “Different signs are seen more clearly in the night sky during the year. For example, Taurus is seen most clearly during the month of January, and Gemini in February, and so on. I was actually surprised when doing research for the dress because i believed that the sign was seen most clearly during the month of when their horoscope sign is- for example- I believed Leo was seen during July/ August, but it is actually seen most clearly during April.”

The most challenging aspect about the dress was how time consuming it was. Just to solder 60 lights one by one onto a dress took forever, not to mention how much programing and sewing was involved. The wires would break off or not have contact, so I was constantly re-soldering up into the last day before presentations.

Lenna spent her childhood in California and that’s where the inspiration for the dress comes from, more precisely she wanted to re-create the sky of the desert night sky in Joshua Tree, Ca. “The desert night sky in Joshua Tree is so clear it is unbelievable! you can seen all the stars, the milky way, etc. Being away from that sky for 3 yrs. here in Sweden, has made me realize how much I really miss it.”

(Photo of the Zodiac Dress by Mika Korhonen)

Maja Theselius about the Therapeutic Light Dress

My intentions was to make an outfit that shifts colours inside the collar depending on the mood you were in. The therapeutic dress could either comfort you by showing a scale of colours that are said to be relaxing, e.g. blue, or maybe get your creativity flowing by lighting up in yellow for example.

But then i found out that some questions had to be answered such as: When the dress “feels” that you’re upset - should it enhance your emotions or the opposite? How does it feel it? By the voice? What frequency is more likely to be associated with a particular mood? What should be the trigger? When you start to speak? How often should the
colours change?

In the end, I didn’t solve any of those questions. Because of a lack of both time and knowledge in electronics, i chose to do a simple prototype.”

(Photos by Mika Korhonen)

Now about the technology used:

“Inside the collar are six LEDs connected to a 9v battery and an arduino microcontroller. The controller is programmed to run a loop of app 10 different colours, each glows in ≈three seconds then it slowly fades into the next colour.

To give the dress an even more cozy feeling, the inside of the bottom of the dress is filled with the small type of plastic balls you can find in sacco cahir, the fluffy beanbag chair.”

(continue reading the story)

Domesticity at War (Amazon USA and UK), by Princeton professor and theorist Beatriz Colomina.

Editor Actar’s blurb: In the postwar, cold war years, there emerges a new type of modern architecture that represents a fundamental transformation from only five decades prior. In Domesticity at War, Beatriz Colomina presents domesticity as a new, and very potent weapon in a changed architectural battlefield. No longer the domain of heroic figures, this post war architecture becomes the property of the middle-class consumer, a truly “modern man” who is constantly bombarded with images of domestic bliss that form a lifestyle campaign, exactingly deployed using recycled military methods and techniques, launched into millions of homes. The resultant mass consumable environment transformed both architect and building, replacing them with newer versions, blindingly happy agents of domestic pleasure, at the same breakneck efficiency that marked the transition of wartime industry to peacetime, from missiles to washing machines. The significance of architects such as Charles and Ray Eames lies in their particular sensitivity to this transformation where buildings and images both come to define occupiable space. A sense of embattled domesticity is the trademark of the immediate postwar years and the focus of this archaeological study.

Turning the hard cover you discover that the book is divided in two units: one book for the text a few photos, and a smaller one containing only illustrations– including advertisements, newspaper and magazine articles, architectural photographs, etc. Charming idea, though it doesn’t make the reading very practical.

The European architecture avant-garde in the ’20s (in particular Le Corbusier) dreamt of mass-produced houses which would recycle the techniques and materials developed during WWI, but it was in the US that architecture really became was a by-product of the military-industrial complex, during the second half of the 20th Century. On the one hand the industry recycled products and techniques developed and tested at war, on the other hand, architects themselves had been involved in the development of military products.

For instance, Charles and Ray Eames’s company designed and produced molded plywood splint for the US military. Devised to replace metal leg splint of wounded soldiers they were a success and by 1945, the company was issuing plywood cabinets, children furniture, chairs, tables, and even Christmas decoration from left-overs.

After 1945, war doesn’t simply disappear, not just because it is carried out in the form of the consumption of mass-produced spin-offs of military efficiency and technology but also because domestic life can no longer be taken for granted, it even becomes a form of art therapy for a traumatized nation. Colomina examines in particular the “Lawn at War.”

Cleaning The Drapes (from Bringing the War Home) by Martha Rosler, 1969-72

During WWII, maintaining a lawn is a national duty performed for the moral of both those who stayed home and the armed force. However, people are invited to dedicate part of the lawn to the Victory Garden. Gardening was also used as a therapy that helped healing hospital veterans. What is interesting is to see how advertising used war imagery and military rhetoric: the garden becomes a battlefield where, for example, beetles are compared to Japanese soldiers; a BugBlaster device is shaped like a bazooka, lawn mowers are advertised as weapons. In fact, the insecticide industry started as a spin-off of military research on chemical warfare during WWII. The most famous example of military use of insecticide being DDT, the “atomic bomb of the insect world.”

Before the dangers of DDT were known, crops & people alike were sprayed with the chemical to protect against bothersome insects

The author goes further when she explains that everything that made America in the ’50s was the result of military effort: cars, appliances, medicine, even fast food, etc.

Computers were the stars of the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Descendants of the first computers developed to decode enemy messages during WWII, these new computers were concerned with domestic issues, from helping out with the homeworks to helping you select the most suitable colour to decorate your home.

At the New York World’s Fair (image via)

The mere fact of being affluent was regarded as a form of victory during the Cold War. Through the “battle of the appliances” the US wanted to create envy and establish their superiority over Russia. The so-called Kitchen Debate epitomized the notion when Nixon and Khrushchev discussed the respective merits of communism and capitalism while the US President was in Moscow and showing the Soviet Premier a model American home, “a vitrine of all-American perfection.”

However, the family fallout shelters popping up in American suburbia were singing a different story. It wasn’t a question of domestic bliss anymore, as the shelters were built in a climate of fear and schizophrenia (there are nice anecdotes in the book about proud owner of new shelters who devised ways to protect their new underground “wing” from their own neighbours).

Melvin and Maria Mininson honeymooned in a Miami bomb shelter in June 1959. Chosen from over 100 couples, the newlyweds spent two encapsulated weeks as a publicity stunt sponsored by a shelter manufacturer

The most extraordinary example of nuclear shelter must be the one devised by Jay Swayze in 1962. This full-time underground home boasted windows throughout the house give you a false sense of being above ground. “Dial a view” murals on the concrete shell enabled the owner to change the panoramic landscape at will and to choose the best lighting according to time: daytime, dusk, nighttime, and dawn.

Real plants grow to artificial lights on the porch, and days and nights are always calm, despite what the weather may be doing 13 feet above ground. Images.

Alison and Peter Smithson’s House of the Future displayed at the Ideal Home exhibition in 1956

Although i was sometimes annoyed by Colomina’s eulogy of everything Eames and the fact that it wasn’t always clear what some of the stories she mentioned had to do with the title of the book, Domesticity at War is fantastically enjoyable. It is witty, clear, and choke-full of well-documented anecdotes and facts. You get to learn the story of the lawn and how it was used in advertisements, discover the plastic houses that came with built-in sewing machines, read how glass curtain walls were used to put domestic bliss on display, and why Buckminster Fuller’s DDUs (Dymaxion Deployment Units) match all of Duchamp’s criteria for the perfect readymade, etc. 3 extra stars for the amazing collection of photos, they make the book worth buying on their own.

Jean-Baptiste Labrune recently pointed me to this excellent overview of “Walking as art.” Here’s a new project to add to that list:

The Energy Harvesting Dérive turns the popular Heelys roller sneaker into a platform for generating electricity from human motion.

Electricity harvested from rolling powers a microcomputer and lcd display embedded on the shoe to deliver random directions for a pedestrian to follow. Arrows and text show up on the screen display telling the wearer which direction she should travel next — North, Northeast, Southwest, etc.

Depending on the speed of rolling, directions appears on the screen every 15 to 20 feet. They invite the wearer to follow a random zig-zaggy path that mimics in physical space the mathematical simulation of the random or drunkard’s walk. The design motivation behind the sneakers’ functionality is also informed by the Situationist practice of the dérive.

The addition of locative technologies such as GPS is feasible, but the intention of these shoes is rather to incite their users to get lost and explore territory outside of their typical transport routines. The shoes force their owner to make choices about whether or not to challenge urban obstacles or interrupt automobile traffic when instructed to move in seemingly hard to traverse directions. Participating in an Energy Harvesting Dérive thus fosters an exploration of the city and its flows. It reveals the impacts of urban planning decisions and encourages users to act out and playfully brainstorm alternative modes of transport and energy.

Besides, The Energy Harvesting Dérive, developed by Christian Croft & Kate Hartman, hopes to promote discussion in the realm of sustainable energy development and alternative transportation design.

Documentation about the making process.

The project will be presented at dorkbot NYc on September 5, 2007, at 7pm and during the Conflux Festival in Brooklyn on Sunday, September 16, 2007, 12:00pm — 5:00pm.

Related: Net_Dérive, the city as instrument.

More walking: the Walking Machine, Self-Sustainable Chair, Walking the Cabbage, Uniblow Outfits, the muk.luk.flux boots, etc.

August is ending and everyone is coming back from the beach. Including the interviews!

Jessica Findley lives in Brooklyn where she works as a “freelance designer, illustrator and animator.” That brief description hardly encompasses all Jessica’s many activities and talents: she makes animated movies, crafts reversable dolls, she draws, she is also a web designer but what brought my attention to her work are the performances and interactive installations she developed and shows around the world., crafts reversable dolls, she draws, she is also a web designer but what brought my attention to her work are the performances and interactive installations she developed and shows around the world.

Oh! And just for the info, Jessica received her BA at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA with her studies focusing on Film, Video and Animation. She then completed her MA in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU.

On your website there is a section called “Work” and another is “art”. what’s your art for if it is not work? is it just a question of what pays the rent? Are you happy with that equilibrium or would you rather focus only on the art?

This is always a difficult challenge. In a dream world it would be great to focus on the art all the time, but a girl needs to eat. It is also nice not to have to think of the monetary value of my art when I make it. I would love to have less work and do more art. Or at least more interesting work and do more art. I have been very happy doing illustrations and work for museums and educational programs. It would be great to take a break to just focus on the art for a while, then go work, then do art. For now both art and work seem to need to be constantly in process.

Can you explain us the project “millefiore effect”? And in particular the Front inflatable garments? How do they work?

The Millefiore Effect was the name that Margot Jacobs, Ralph Borland and myself gave our team when we made “Front”. Millefiori means 1000 flowers in italian, it is also a technique used in crafting many colors of glass or clay together to create patterns. We liked this symbolism for the collective efforts of our group. Margot came from an industrial design education, Ralph from sculpture, and I from film video and animation and had experience sewing my own clothes.

The project “Front” consists of 2 symbiotic, voice-activated, inflatable conflict suits. Front is a sort of an endless game of vocal battle between two people who wear suits equipped with fans which inflate when they yell. Each suit has two types of inflation sacks - aggressive and defensive - which inflate depending on who is making sound. The suits are to be worn by the public.

How do people behave when they wear it? Does it trigger any particular/unexpected behaviour?

It’s interesting, some people are quite shy and then others get really into it and get really silly or serious about it. It can have a explosive emotional release or instill stage fright. We have had people sing opera, burst into contagious laughter, bark like dogs, talk like knights in armor, and make up comedy routines. Some places we go people are too shy to even put them on, and usually Margot and I will just get in and go for it, after that we end up with at least a couple people who sign up to get ridiculous.

Aeolian Ride in Melbourne, photo by Clayton Harper

What was the impetus for your project Aeolian Ride?

I wanted to do something that would transform the everyday public landscape and make people giddy or baffled.

One day I was riding my bike in Brooklyn with white nylon jacket on that was unzipped. I felt it fluttering behind me and thought that it would be great to make costumes for a big bike ride. I forgot about it until one day my friend Ryan O’connor was trying to think of ideas for an art project at burning man. I told him my idea and he thought it was great but he ended up making a giant octopus instead. A year later he called me. He said he had been thinking about my project and I needed to do it. This was not too long after 9/11 and my life seemed to lack any luster. A switch flipped in my brain and I suddenly was up to my elbows in rip-stop nylon designing inflatable costumes.

You brought the project to different cities, was the experience extremely different from one place to the other? Any plan of organizing another Aeolian Ride any time soon? I’d love it if you could bring that to Europe.

I find that riding a bike in a city is such a wonderful way to get to know its landscape. The people are what make the place for me. Its interesting who comes to the ride. It often depends on the connection who brought me to the city. It’s usually a combination of different cycling cultures, every day cyclists, commuters, advocates, artists, messengers… anyone with a bike is welcome! I am always looking for people willing to organize and find funding to bring the ride to their city. I call these people champions. Each ride has had great champions who made it happen.

The responses vary from city to city. New York was the first ride, it was rainy so I wasn’t sure if it was going to happen and I didn’t have a permit so I was nervous when the cops showed up. Funny my dad was there and he is such a charmer he gave the cops a couple of Aeolian buttons and told them about how excited he was for his daughters art project and they left.

San Francisco happened in conjunction with the Bicycle Film Festival and was sponsored by a grant from the Black Rock Arts Organization. The people there had seen it all and loved it. They shouted out Angels! Sperm!

Capetown was gorgeous. My good friend Ralph Borland was the Champion of this ride. The Discovery Chanel was doing a program on local artists and tried to show a collaboration between myself and artist Matthew Hindley. They purchased a couple suits for Matthew to work with. Unfortunately the Discovery Channel dropped the ball and gave me no images or video for that event.

Aeolian Ride in Cape Town, photo by Sean Wilson

I worked with Bike Summer’s Dave Benoff to bring the Aeolian Ride to LA. The riders out there were used to lots of fun. Before the ride I joined the Midnight Ridaz for a fun ride in Heavy Metal Costume to a bowling alley where they had Metal Karaoke and giant paper mache musical instruments.

LA was our first night ride with lights in the suits and we had a magical moment where mostly just the riders got to see the effect of the lights. During our ride through the bright city most of us didn’t notice or remember we were wearing lights inside the suits. When we arrived at the dark park all the riders softly gasped and oohed at the forgotten surprise that they were glowing.

My connection in Melbourne, Chris Star, is very deep into the politics of cycling and its community. We had a bit of competition in that the naked ride was happening at a similar time. The city and its people are super charming and laid back.

Halifax was wonderful, my connection, a great photographer Francesca Tallone is embedded into the arts there. It was great fun and there was tons of enthusiasm for the ride. The Aeolian Poster was on the cover of their local weekly happenings paper all around town! The waterfront there is magical.

I would love to bring the ride to Europe. Who wants to be the champion?

Grow is a serenade for plants. Are you sure that the plants appreciate all that musical effort? How did you compose the music? Does it depend on the plant?

Haha. I am not sure if the plants really react to the sounds or not. It seems at least one vintner believes it.I did read that it is a common grade school experiment to play music for plants.

I found it difficult to write love songs for the plants. Half of them are for the plants and half are actually love songs for my friends. I wrote and recorded each song myself in an abandoned studio in a building I used to live in.

Design, animation, illustration, interactive installation, etc. You seem to jump effortlessly and with talent from one medium to the other, is there anything you are bad at?

My strength is definitely my weakness. I love learning new skills and working in different mediums, but sometimes this can be fragmenting. I really envy people who know exactly what they want and have a path to get there. I chose this path, to explore, and it can be really challenging not to lose sight of what I really want. I try to follow my heart, eat my dessert first.

And more seriously, what do you find rewarding about each of these mediums?

I am most interested in the idea first, then the materials and medium second but they definitely inform each other. Every medium provides me with a way to explore my ideas in different ways.

Are there any designer and/or artist whom you think should get more attention from the public?

Two of my favorite artists are Gelatin and Theo Jensen. I love the possible positive and the ingenious imaginative.

Any upcoming project you could share with us?

I am working on a graphic novel about the adventures of a girl who gets transported to the twin planet of earth.

Thanks Jessica!

More on her websites: Work + Art, Illustrations and Inspirational Blogging.

Modell zur Visualisierung enables a visualization of sound based on the impact of magnetic fields on an electron beam. The precisely crafted soundtrack created for this project comprises of a constellation of sine wave tones. A coil within the cathode ray tube receives these frequencies converting them into a magnetic field whose impact becomes visible in the form of the modulation of a blue electronic beam.

By Carsten Nicolai.

It’s Sunday and what else could i do but pay a visit to the world’s biggest dinosaur skeleton at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin.

The 150-million-year-old skeleton of the Brachiosaurus is 12 metres high by 22 metres long (its femur alone weighs 300kg) and although i’m not at all into that Jurassic Park mania, i could hear my jaw drop to the floor.

The skeleton was unearthed by German archaeologists in east Africa before WWI and is the tallest dinosaur in any museum. It shares the space with the skeleton of a 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx and other smaller dinosaurs’ remains.

ART+COM has designed some Jurascopes to allow visitors catch a glimpse of dinosaurs in their everyday life.

Filming what you see inside the binoculars was too tricky. Instead, i filmed the same videos but shown on a big screen.

The Jurascope works in the same way as one of Art+Com earlier projects, the Timescope, when you point its binoculars to one of the dinosaurs in the room, you see its body being filled with flesh then covered with skin and finally the animal enters what is supposed to have been its natural environment. The animated films comes with noises and roars. More the Jurascope towards another dinosaur and you’ll get another animation.

Flickr images.

I’m officially going back to work today. I’m not sure i’d be able to define what i mean by “work” given that, as my brother would tell you, my life is “a constant holiday anyway”. Well, i do not exactly agree with him and i have until tonight to figure out what to say about the issue as i’m flying back to Berlin to give a talk at 9 to 5, a festival camp for those who feel that working should be more like living – and not the other way around. The day after that i should be taking part to Pecha Kucha Berlin, if only i could remember what i said i would talk about.

On Monday, i will go to Beijing for Get It Louder, an exhibition traveling around China to show and discuss design and art, mostly by “young creators with Chinese background working in different places around the world.”

I have to thank the organizers for the invitation but i suspect that it’s Aaajiao who has orchestrated it. I got to know Aaajiao over a year ago when he asked me if it was ok to translate the bits he liked on wmmna in chinese. I keep being amazed that he (who’s already super busy working on more personal projects such as EventStructure, COrnerSoUnd, dorkbot Beijing) and his team are still translating even the longest posts with regularity while adding more Chinese-focused stories on their blog, which their ironically called we-need-money-not-art.

I will spend one week in Beijing so if you have any tips of place to see art, eat vegetarian and buy funky cosmetics, do let me know.

After that it’s back in Berlin for a few days then off to Linz for the Ars Electronica festival and symposium. Looking forward to see everyone.

Then more mad carbon footprinting as i’ll go to New York for my favourite event ever: Conflux, a festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice.

Image on above on the left is by the collective Alterazioni Video. While in China, Alterazioni Video used an anonymizer (a tool which guarantees anonymity while surfing), which enabled them to draw up a list of words and phrases prohibited on the main search engines and instant messenger programmes in use in China, with the aim of working out the semantic basis behind these filters. The artists then put these terms back “into circulation”, by printing the offending phrases on plastic bags, in English and Chinese, and handing them out free of charge on the streets of Shanghai, with the intention of restoring their full communicative potential. Now that’s just one little aspect of the project Night Talk of the Forbidden City #2. The Fabio Paris gallery in Brescia (close to Milan) is opening on September 29 a show dedicated to the works the Milan-based collective developed in China.

There’s currently a fantastic installation at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. The work brings magic and poetry to the otherwise stiff and boring exhibition space located on the dreadful Unter den Linden. As you push the door of the DG open, you enter a totally different universe, with a greenhouse, a wooden construction and plots of the greenest grass.

New York artist Phoebe Washburn has taken over the whole exhibition space with a factory. The work draws on “serious” disciplines such as architecture and ecological design but the factory is totally absurd, it doesn’t generate anything else than grass for its own sod roof, where it will eventually decay. The grass is the excuse for the factory to exist. It is a closed-off production, it starts from scratch, it looks well-thought and engineered but it goes right to a dead-end.

As usual the artist has rescued and used as material the discarded and overlooked items that people have left on the streets. For the first time however, she’s been adding to the recycled bits of woods and trash, some rather large scale mechanics. Visitors are invited to enter the fabric and watch through plastic windows how a conveyor belt loop shuttles at intervals small plots of soil through different stations for light and water, which nourishes the growth of grass.

These “plots” are periodically tended by a “gardener” who plants the seed, allows it to germinate in a greenhouse before shifting the organic matter to the factory where it will mature, and finally places the output on the roof of the structure where it will eventually atrophy and wither, removed from the sustaining system of water and light, thus exhibiting the full cycle of growth and decay.

You don’t see the gardener but he or she has left traces in the adjacent greenhouse: gloves dirty with mud, packets of seeds, hoses and all sorts of gardening tools.

In a documentary directed by Moritz Wolf, Washburn explains how the factory works according to its own set of rules. Most of these rules are dumb, they don’t really make sense but the artist follows them nevertheless in order to see where they will take the work.

My images.

Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man (Amazon USA and UK), by Jessica Bruder.

What it says on the tin: Burning Book is both a loving commemoration of the event’s storied history and an enlightening companion for festivalgoers. Bruder explores the unique ethos and breathtaking art installations that have shaped the event, along with Black Rock City’s distinctive landmarks, pranks, lore, and gift-based economy. Illustrated with hundreds of stunning photographs, Burning Book is a striking tribute to an extraordinary cultural phenomenon for the legions who participate in Burning Man every year, and for those who haven’t become part of this unforgettable celebration — yet.

Waw! I had read about Burning Man and i know several Burners. Every single one of them sings the praise of the event. I kind of gathered from our conversations that given my obsession with cosmetics, fashion and macro bio diet i would not exactly thrive in the middle of the desert. The book confirms what i suspected BM is best left enjoyed from afar as long as i am concerned. But damn! It also looks like i am missing an extraordinary event.

The eight-day-long annual festival kicks off every year on the last Monday of August and concludes on the sixth day with the burning of a huge wooden sculpture of a man. A temporary city on the playa of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, called Black Rock City, is built from scratch every year to host the event. The organizers describe BM as an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.

Motorized Cupcakes and Muffins

The book reads like a novel. Written by a journalist who has participated several times to Burning Man and communicates incredibly well her enthusiasm. You follow the Burners’ days from the moment they embark on the journey to the Desert, shop with them as they stop at Sparks or Gerlach to buy gallons of water, costumes, plasters, etc. And even if the book brings you behind the scenes –where the DPW surveys, builds, then takes down the basic infrastructure of the temporary community in the desert–, even if you it gives you the lowdown on on-site foot massages, the issue of hygiene in this ferociously hostile environment, even if you catch a glimpse at the building up of the Thunderdome or of some facetious art projects, even if you are told the story behind the mythical Tuna Guys, you are still left wondering how on Earth they manage to turn that wild party into America’s most fascinating festival every year.

As befits the subject, the design of the book is made of surprises and whimsical graphics, letters run into corners, inflate, or curl. The images are everywhere and as you turn the page your eyes increasingly wonder at the picture printed right before them. Oh! The best part for me was to learn new expressions, so if you want to know why even “the Yahoos” have to face the dreadful “Nose Tator” effect, that book has the answer.

By Richard Kalvar.

Electric Chair, Executions series (Figure 0049)

Catherine Chalmers‘ executions series depicts roaches being electrocuted, hung from miniature nooses, and burned at the stake. None of the roaches in the photographs however was actually burned or executed or hung-in fact, the roaches were already dead by the time they were photographed. In the case of the gas chamber photos, the cockroaches were immobilized with carbon dioxide and woke up a few minutes later. (via)

Otto van Busch pointed me to this new course of Fashion & Technology at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University. The course explores the field through a study of clothing and style as socio-cultural communication and an investigation of how emerging technologies can assist in personal expression. After that, practical workshops invite students to craft their own prototype.

Calle Rosenqvist, Beat Dress (photo by Johan Sundell)

Otto only sent me a few pictures to illustrate the work of the students. Nothing else. But the teaser was good enough, i asked course coordinator Kristina Törnblom to put me in touch with the students so that i could understand better what their projects were about.

First victim of my questions, Emma Thordin Ungesson told me the story of The Drum Suit:

(Photos by Mika Korhonen)

The suit enables the drum player, someone who usually doesn’t get as much attention as the singer and other band members, to play and move freely around the stage during concerts.

“Piezo sensors sewn in the cuffs and under the foot interact with an arduino board that is connected with an midi wire and then in to the computer,” explains Emma. “In the computer, midi files on a midi keyboard generate a bass sound and cymbals sounds. I also peeled off the plastic covers of the piezo sensors to make them more sensitive.”

Because Emma has been quite busy recently the project is on hold but the original plan was to have the midi player sewn in it as well so that it wouldn’t have to be connected to the computer. Another idea is to create similar suits for the whole band.

Lenna Truncale about The Zodiac Dress

“All 12 zodiac signs are formed by LEDS and sequins on the border of the dress. All signs light up at once, but only one of them lights brighter than the others depending on what month it is,” says Lenna. “Different signs are seen more clearly in the night sky during the year. For example, Taurus is seen most clearly during the month of January, and Gemini in February, and so on. I was actually surprised when doing research for the dress because i believed that the sign was seen most clearly during the month of when their horoscope sign is- for example- I believed Leo was seen during July/ August, but it is actually seen most clearly during April.”

The most challenging aspect about the dress was how time consuming it was. Just to solder 60 lights one by one onto a dress took forever, not to mention how much programing and sewing was involved. The wires would break off or not have contact, so I was constantly re-soldering up into the last day before presentations.

Lenna spent her childhood in California and that’s where the inspiration for the dress comes from, more precisely she wanted to re-create the sky of the desert night sky in Joshua Tree, Ca. “The desert night sky in Joshua Tree is so clear it is unbelievable! you can seen all the stars, the milky way, etc. Being away from that sky for 3 yrs. here in Sweden, has made me realize how much I really miss it.”

(Photo of the Zodiac Dress by Mika Korhonen)

Maja Theselius about the Therapeutic Light Dress

My intentions was to make an outfit that shifts colours inside the collar depending on the mood you were in. The therapeutic dress could either comfort you by showing a scale of colours that are said to be relaxing, e.g. blue, or maybe get your creativity flowing by lighting up in yellow for example.

But then i found out that some questions had to be answered such as: When the dress “feels” that you’re upset - should it enhance your emotions or the opposite? How does it feel it? By the voice? What frequency is more likely to be associated with a particular mood? What should be the trigger? When you start to speak? How often should the
colours change?

In the end, I didn’t solve any of those questions. Because of a lack of both time and knowledge in electronics, i chose to do a simple prototype.”

(Photos by Mika Korhonen)

Now about the technology used:

“Inside the collar are six LEDs connected to a 9v battery and an arduino microcontroller. The controller is programmed to run a loop of app 10 different colours, each glows in ≈three seconds then it slowly fades into the next colour.

To give the dress an even more cozy feeling, the inside of the bottom of the dress is filled with the small type of plastic balls you can find in sacco cahir, the fluffy beanbag chair.”

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